Soldiers and negroes
are rebuilding the fallen wall. Prisoners stand at a distance often shouting:
"That is good for you, Rebs"; "That's the way your Confederacy
will fall; Grant and Sherman are making bigger holes than these."
"Ho, Reb, what are you doing with dat nigger dar; 'pears to us you're
reduced to the level of the nigger." "It's hard enough to starve on
cob-meal and be hunted by dogs, but when you come to build bull-pens for us
with niggers, working by your sides, you are hyenas, you are black
abolitionists, you are barbarians." Plenty of other taunts are indulged
till men get sick of it.
Two new walls are
being built outside of the main one. The most hopeful believers in immediate
exchange, are puzzled as to what it means. Tunnelling cannot be successfully
done more than sixty or eighty feet horizontally, the air becoming
insufferable. The vacuity is necessarily small, just admitting a man as he
draws himself along. It cannot be larger for fear of exposure, besides the dirt
is dug with hands, sticks, etc., and passed to the opening to be carried to the
swamp, or whereever it can be concealed. It cannot be ventilated for that might
be a key to discovery. Likely these new walls are to obstruct the digging of
tunnels.
For several days
barracks have been in course of erection in the north part, the work being done
by our men on parole who bring the lumber in on their shoulders. They are
allowed an extra ration and occasionally opportunities to trade for their
benefit. What do these barracks mean? Are we to stay here all winter? men
asked. At the rate they go up, I think we will, if we wait for them. Some say
they are for hospitals.
Steward Brown, who
is an Englishman and not a soldier, on parole, expresses the belief that
it was fortunate for prisoners that Stoneman's expedition failed, for it was
the intention of Gen. Winder to use the Florida battery on the prison had any
considerable Union force approached Andersonville within seven miles, and had
so ordered in the regular way in writing, on July 27th.
[Note-Here
is the order. It was found on file among the records at the Confederate War
Department at Richmond, and is with other records in possession of the
government, so it is plain Steward Brown knew his statement was true. This is
the diabolical order:
Order No 13.
Headquarters Military Prison, Andersonville,
Ga., July 27, 1864.
The officers on duty and in charge of the Battery of Florida Artillery at
the time will, upon receiving notice that the enemy has approached within seven
miles of this post, open upon the stockade with grapeshot, without reference to
the situation beyond these lines of defense.
JOHN H. WINDER,
Brigadier General Commanding.]
Five men sunstruck
and reported dead; most of us are stupefied by heat. For more than a month it
has been almost unbearable. The dazzling rays reflected by sand flash through us
like flames of fire. The stench of the filthy earth rises hot and vapory to our
nostrils. Oh, that I might feel the shade of the beautiful forest yonder, whose
green trees look pityingly over upon us! How relieved we would be by an hour of
repose on the fresh earth beneath them!
Go to the gate to
help William Kline. A number of the sick are carried through the gate and laid
in the yard by the stockade. A Rebel sergeant soon ordered us back, no doctors
appearing. The sick had been notified at roll call to go for treatment, and
their feeble spirits were animated with hope. Some wept bitterly and sank into
despair at the disappointment. The Confederate sergeant, in answer to
questions, remarked, "They might as well go to hell as to the hospital. It
is a right hard place; the doctors can do nothing."
Naturally we believe
the word hospital means something. In this horrid distress men long for its
benign influence; many are consoled with the thought of being admitted, even
when we know it is a cruel, wicked mockery.
Near the sinks a
sentry fired tonight, the ball grazing a man's thigh, near where I walked, and
whizzed by into the swamp. No rations today; nothing to eat. Men have loitered
near the gate since noon hoping for something but in vain. We lay down to-night
hungry, sick and sad. Not a crumb of anything all night, all day and all night
again, with no certainty of anything to-morrow.
ODE TO WIRZ.
Cheating them who truly trust
Is a coward's villainy;
But when we yield to whom we must,
We suffer viler tyranny:
If venom doth full license wield
To feed the vengeance and the hates
No virtue has for years concealed,
And which a misled South elates.
A brutal knave were he who slay
A child that slumbered on his knee;
But we are thrown within his sway
Who lacks sense and magnanimity,
And glories in a brutal way
Toward men who fight 'gainst slavery.
Looking at the swamp
with its deposit of ordure, intensely alive with billions of flies and maggots,
today, it came to me that not only the early but the late bird can catch worms
and catch them continually, if fool enough to visit the place. But no bird have
I yet seen in this foul realm. Mingled with a sense of disgust, I am prone to
wonder. Out of this mass I see a new creation, an emerging of animate life of low
order. The flies that feed on the excreta, deposit germs from which, in
connection with the deposit, when operated on by solar energy, the sun being
the battery, these lives germinate in form of maggots totally unlike the fly,
unlike any worm I ever noticed. These millions of loathsome things, squirming
in roasting sun, in a few days develop into winged insects larger and darker
than maggots, an inch long. From among a cloud of flies and acres of worms I
see them rise and fly from the filthy bed of their inception, seemingly seeking
existence elsewhere. Interest was first incited in these low fledglings, when
they appeared on ground bordering the swamp, where they fell in the mush when
men were at repast. Indeed there is life, or principles of life in matter dead.
Here is a low order of exhibition of Nature's power to evolve and produce
phases of animation degrees above their physical source.
SOURCE: John Worrell
Northrop, Chronicles from the Diary of a War Prisoner in Andersonville
and Other Military Prisons of the South in 1864, pp. 103-5
